


A Million Wasted Chances

by 11paruline44



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Anakin figures his sh•t out, Angst, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Darth Vader Redemption, F/M, Gen, Groundhog Day AU, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, ROTS Fix-It, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It, at least, dark Anakin redemption, of sorts, or - Freeform, slow-burn redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11paruline44/pseuds/11paruline44
Summary: The last thing Vader remembers is agony on the banks of Mustafar, following his ill-fated duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. But the Force seems to have given him another chance, as the next thing he knows, he's waking up in his room at the Temple, starting the day all over again. He's happy to have the opportunity to avoid his fiery fate—but then it happens again. And again.Trapped in a time loop on the fateful day he Fell, the Sith Lord formerly known as Anakin Skywalker has all the time in the world to ponder his choices. But can he make any better ones?
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 143
Kudos: 512





	1. and so it begins

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always a sucker for Prequel-era fix-its, but I hadn't noticed anyone take a shot at a Groundhog Day AU for my problematic fave Anakin Skywalker (or I just didn't find this fic, if it indeed exists), so I've decided to give it a go. I love this concept, even if I didn't fully like the Groundhog Day movie (my parents were appalled, lol). It's the perfect formula for a slow-burn redemption, you know? Of course, Anakin never makes it easy on us—sigh. 
> 
> Note: My first scene takes place during Revenge of the Sith and follows the same general plot as the movie, but I'm sorry, the dialogue just does not do it for me. I tweaked some of it to have them say some things that felt a little more natural. I doubt I've happened upon the definitive dialogue that should actually replace the cringe-y meme-worthy lines from the original (I'll never not die laughing at "It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!"), but please bear with me!

_PROLOGUE_

It happens in a blur, of lightsabers clashing, of the screams of the dying, of a chorus of whispering and pleading and crying voices closing in from all sides. The events of the last rotation start to mesh together, until all he can truly remember is the rage. A roaring, deep-seated rage with embers lodged so far down inside him they feel like they’ll burn forever.

And that’s fine with Vader. After all, he’s right to be angry. They betrayed him. They all did—the Senate, and the Jedi, and Mace Windu and Yoda and Obi-Wan and even Padmé—

Vader growls, pushing back the twinge in his heart he feels at the thought of his wife with a rush of fury, and uses the flare in the Dark Side to propel him as he jumps back to Kenobi’s position with a brutal overhead strike. His former master, ever the defensive dueler, handily blocks, of course, and they’re off to another deadly volley, strokes coming hard and fast. The fire roiling in Vader’s stomach bubbles up with frustration at not being able to land a hit. But, unlike when he was a Jedi—so weak, so lacking in knowledge—Vader uses it to gather more tendrils of the Dark Side around him like a cloud, just like Sidious, his Master, taught him. He relishes in the strength he feels flowing through him.

It is only a matter of time. Soon, his old master will lie broken at his feet, and Vader will have his revenge.

Just then, the boiling lava around the two duelers swallows up part of the flotsam they’re standing on, and they have to find purchase on something else, despite none of the wreckage bearing any semblance of safety. Vader can hardly bring himself to care. Kenobi launches himself onto a pole floating in the maelstrom, so Vader simply follows his prey. 

Kenobi inches back from him, his face contorted with pain—not physical, but emotional, Vader can still tell from what he’s projecting in the Force, despite the fact that he can’t feel their old bond anymore. It didn’t break, so much as dissolve, swallowed up by a dark cloud from Vader’s side. As it should be, Vader thinks with a smirk. But feeling the conflict and sorrow radiating from his old master is a gift rather than annoyance, one he takes, uses to reinforce his Dark.

Let him suffer. Kenobi turned against him. He deserves to feel Vader’s pain, one thousandfold stronger.

Kenobi’s still stepping back from the fight, though, to Vader’s annoyance. “Anakin,” he starts, voice raw. “I—I can see now that the Jedi might not have been the place for you.” He grimaces. “You always felt so much,” he adds, a bit softer.

Vader’s anger surges. Kenobi doesn’t get to apologize, not now, before he’s _suffered._ With a wordless roar, Vader dashes back into the fight, so quick and insistent Kenobi can’t do anything but block. 

Somehow, this isn’t enough to convince Kenobi to shut up, however. “Anakin, that doesn’t make the Sith the right path,” he pants between blows. “They only promise power—you’ve never been interested in that, Anakin, I know you—”

“You know me?” Vader spits. Memories flash before his eyes—his mother’s dying breath, Ahsoka’s back turned as she walked away in the sunset, Padmé’s swollen belly. “You never _cared_ enough to know me, Kenobi,” he growls, gathering the Force with his left hand and pushing Kenobi backwards, perilously close to the lava. How _dare_ he. Vader stalks forward to deliver a killing blow, but Kenobi pries himself upward and flips back into position, ready to block. The blades skitter into a standstill.

Kenobi has the gall to look him right in the eyes. “Anakin, I _do_ care.”

A reflexive wall of fury rises within Vader, so potent it takes his breath away. “Call me by that name, one more time—” he chokes out.

Kenobi blinks. “Or what,” he says softly, no mocking tone in his voice as usual. Only a question. Somehow, this makes Vader even more irate.

Before he can respond, however, a giant wave of lava crashes into the wreckage, and both are tossed into the air. At some point during the struggle, they’d managed to float closer to the obsidian sands of the shore, so Vader reaches out to the Force to propel himself far enough in on the bank so as not to get scorched. As he rolls to his feet, he notices Kenobi’s done the same. Without sparing a moment, Vader rushes him with a guttural cry.

Here, with surer purchase on the ground, the duel reaches a fever pitch. Soon, Vader’s raw rage isn’t enough to keep pace, and he’s forced to focus. All of his concentration soaks into the Force, and into every minutae of lightsaber technique he’s ever learned—steps taught to him by the very man before him. Vader simmers at the thought, but is quickly distracted by a stray swipe that forces him to duck, then flip back out of range. 

A quick glance at Kenobi shows that he’s in a similar situation, brow furrowed in deep concentration. Kenobi’s coming at him with everything he believes he has, now, Vader knows—all of his expertise, but with none of the emotional power Vader’s using. The rage that could make him strong. And Kenobi’s matching him anyway. Vader’s insides boil at this—he, a Dark Lord of the Sith, should be wiping the floor with his level-headed old master.

A spark of fear lights in him. Sidious would be displeased with this performance.

Growling, Vader redoubles his attack, connecting back into the simmering pit of rage he feels inside him, matching his presence in the Force to mirror the churning of the lava on the banks. He lets his fury thrash and roar, and then lets it sink down, into his foundations, to the very dark pit of the Force presence of Mustafar itself. 

Vader shoots his former master a fresh glare. The old man will see Vader’s power, will cower before the wrath of a Sith. And then Vader will make him pay.

Their blades flash even faster now, all strategy forgotten in the pure instinct of skill. It’s nothing like their sparring sessions ever were. Back and forth, up and down the bank, the duel rages. The close calls increase in frequency—a millisecond here, and Vader would have lost his sword hand yet again—a millisecond there, and Vader’s saber would have pierced Kenobi’s chest. 

And then, amidst the frenzy, their blades become locked once more. Vader’s teeth grits as he tries to force Kebobi’s saber back, to no avail.

“Anakin,” Kenobi pleads. “Please.”

In response, Vader uses his fury to Force-push Kenobi back and flip away to give him some distance. Then, he charges, launching himself up and over to strike Kenobi where he lies—

—except Kenobi has somehow recovered his footing, and greets Vader with a wide swipe—

—and then the world around Vader erupts into pain. His eyes vaguely register his severed legs falling to the ground, and Kenobi’s look of shock, but all Vader can understand is the agony as he falls, helpless, to the ground, the sharp glass of the sand slicing into him, the screaming pain in the absence of his limbs, and the burning, the unbearable, savage heat everywhere, boiling his flesh.

Somewhere in the haze, Kenobi’s voice reaches him. “You were my brother, Anakin,” he cries. “I loved you.”

Incensed, Vader’s able to convert just enough of his pain into boiling anger, enough to scream, “I HATE YOU!”, before the agony takes over again. He’s only vaguely aware, as time burns away into nothing, that at some point, Kenobi’s figure, blurred by the waves of heat rising from the sand, disappears. Alone with nothing but his pain to keep him company, the blackness rises to meet him, and he knows no more.

***

_ROTATION 1_

And then he wakes up, and the pain is gone. 

Vader jumps to his feet—his _feet,_ still there—and glances around, wildly, at his surroundings. He’s in his room. At the Jedi Temple. The Temple that he recalls burning, down to the ground, like it deserved. 

Vader growls, anger rising back up to the fever pitch he’s become accustomed to. Why is the Force-damned thing still here?

And in fact, why is _he_ still here? He should be—

—and then the memories of Mustafar come crashing back, dousing him like gasoline to the fire of his rage. The edges of his vision blur and he roars, punching the wall with his metal fist, so hard he nearly breaks through the plastisteel entirely. 

_Kenobi._ He interfered with Vader’s plans, and then he fought him, and pretended he _cared,_ only to maim him and then leave him, _burning alive_ on that karking bank—

Before Vader knows it, he’s barged through the door, lightsaber lit, all thoughts other than finding and killing Kenobi vanished from his mind. He reaches his old master’s door, and, when he finds it’s locked, plunges his saber into the door and stabs at it until he’s through.

Kenobi is at his feet, lightsaber lit, when Vader barges in. The sight of him nearly reduces his mind to a static of rage, but Vader takes the anger and channels it inward in the Force to keep his vision clear. Vader lunges at him, but not before he sees Kenobi’s face of pure, unadulterated shock and horror.

“Anakin?”

Kenobi manages to gather himself just enough to catch Vader’s blade, and then parries a series of strikes in quick succession until he catches the sabers in a lock. Vader growls—there are no offensive strikes or aggression in his opponent. Kenobi’s just trying to stop the fight, the look on his face still no less surprised than when Vader came in. The nerve. As if he didn’t know—

“Anakin,” Kenobi tries again, uncharacteristic panic edging his voice. “What’s this—what are you—”

“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID,” Vader roars, breaking the standstill in the fight and hacking in Kenobi’s direction. The other man ducks, and Vader’s saber traces sparks across the wall. 

“No, Anakin, I really don’t,” Kenobi quavers. “Please, why don’t we settle down and—”

Vader sees red at the insolence. “YOU!” he growls, saber swinging wildly. “How DARE you pretend!” Vader lets his fury aim his strikes, Kenobi avoiding each one until his old master is backed into a corner, his hands up defensively—no, _placatingly._

“Anakin, I don’t know what this is about, but _please_ listen to me—”

“YOU LEFT ME TO BURN!” Vader howls, the agony of the moment coming into the forefront of his memory. He can still feel the heat all around him, searing him, and _Kenobi_ was the reason why—

He just wants to crush him. Make him feel unbearable pain.

Vader lashes out with the Force in a blind fury, and Kenobi rises up off the ground, gasping and clutching at his throat. Vindictive pleasure starts to appease Vader, through the simple knowledge that _he_ is now the one causing the suffering—

—and then a shock spreads through him, and his vision spirals back to black.

***

For a while, the blackness is all Vader knows. Something distant niggles at his mind—there’s something going on, just at the edge of his awareness, but his consciousness is too sluggish to make it out, preferring the peace of the still silence. Eventually, however, Vader’s hearing starts to pick out distinct voices.

“—he’s _never_ —”

“—reason why—”

“—Force presence felt like Dooku’s—”

“— _Anakin_ —”

Something in Vader snaps to attention, and he opens his eyes. 

He’s lying on a hard, durasteel floor. In fact, durasteel closes in all around him, from every direction save one, which is sealed by a ray shield instead. Fury surges within him—he’s been put in a Jedi cell—except something feels off. His rage feels less powerful this time, like he’s unable to use it to power the Dark Side—and Vader looks down at his hands to see that he's been put in Force bonds. 

Anger consumes him, vanishing all rational thoughts from his mind, and he scrambles to his feet, then body-slams into the plasma door with all his might. It repels him, of course, flinging him back and causing him to skid across the floor. The pain he feels upon impact rattles his skull, and he rises to his feet more slowly this time. He closes his eyes and tries to rub his head, only to realize he can’t, due to the tight bonds. Vader snarls and opens his eyes to glare in the direction of the plasma door.

Standing behind it, colored yellow by the translucent barrier, are the very Jedi who threw him in here.

Within an instant, Vader is pressed once more against the barrier, standing tall so he can look the Jedi scum in the eyes. 

Then, movement attracts his attention from behind them, and another Jedi squeezes into their midst and reveals himself to be none other than Kenobi. Vader bares his teeth, cursing that he doesn’t have his lightsaber. He wants nothing more than to take his saber and burn that man’s flesh with it, like Kenobi did to him, and then cut off _his_ limbs—

“Skywalker,” someone else says, and Vader snaps his attention to the perpetrator. It’s Mace Windu—and something about his presence bothers Vader, tickles at his sense of logic, but Vader’s too furious to care. “What is the meaning of this?”

Vader smirks. “I wouldn’t expect you Jedi to understand,” he sneers. They can come up with better questions than that, the filth—as if they didn’t all betray him.

“Jedi, you say, as though you are not?’ Ki-Adi Mundi intones.

What an insinuation. Vader clenches his fist. “Can you not recognize a Dark Lord of the Sith?” he scoffs. Some of the Jedi make a show of gasping, as if they did not already know. 

“But yesterday you were—Anakin, _when_ did this happen?” Kenobi finally pipes up. He shakes his head as if in confusion. “Anakin, this isn’t you. Last night, I seem to recall you behaving normally, but you woke up today and—What’s going on?” Kenobi finishes by affixing Vader with a pleading stare.

Part of Vader roils with anger at Kenobi’s address, but something else in what he said bothers Vader. _Last night._ None of the Jedi are acting like they know anything about yesterday—about Vader’s Fall, about Order 66—

—wait. Vader’s thoughts grind to a halt. They should be dead. He watched Mace Windu die. The Temple burned, Vader saw to it personally.

Is he somehow in the past?

Suddenly, Windu’s commlink blinks, and all the Jedi turn to it, expectant—as if they are waiting for some news. “It’s Master Fisto, from Utapau,” Windu murmurs, evidently trying, but failing, not to be heard. “We’ll interrogate him,” he nods in Vader’s direction, “later.” Windu turns to leave, the rest of the Jedi in tow, except Kenobi, who shoots Vader one last hurt, and confused, look, before leaving as well.

Vader wants to be angry, but he is just as baffled.

Utapau?

If his instincts are right, he's indeed somehow ended up transported into yesterday—a version of yesterday that looks different from the one he just lived through. Kenobi was supposed to be the one to go to Utapau to face Grievous—except, because of Vader’s attempt to kill him in the morning, the Council would have wanted to keep him around, and sent someone else instead.

All the changes are due to Vader’s actions this time around, and to nothing else.

Vader’s first instinct is to be angry. Whatever messing around the Force just did, all of his and his Master’s plans to exterminate the Jedi have just been undone. The kriffing Temple is still standing. Order 66 has not come to pass. And his Master—his Master doesn’t even know Vader is his apprentice, unless Sidious sensed his darkened Force presence from the Senate building. Cut off from the Force, Vader can’t contact him now. 

A rush of fury fills Vader, and he slams his bound wrists into the plasma barrier. This is far worse. The Jedi have him prisoner, and—

—and he isn’t maimed and burning on the banks of Mustafar.

Biting down the wave of rage at the memory for the time being, Vader ponders his situation. The Force has indeed spared him the pain of such a loss. He may have inadvertently landed himself in a cell, but his Master’s plans are all still intact, and can be executed later. Except, this time, with prior knowledge to use against the Jedi, they can be put into action with even less resistance. And Vader can exact his revenge upon Kenobi, all with him being none the wiser.

All Vader has to do is figure a way out of this cell.


	2. Rage only goes so far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shut up in his cell, all that’s left for Vader to do, unfortunately, is to think.
> 
> Which is the last thing he has anticipated doing. When he turned to the Dark Side of the Force, finally leaving behind the Jedi ways and their weakness, he pictured his near future as being filled with action, with battle, conquest, and power—instead of being cooped up in a Jedi cell with nothing but his own thoughts.
> 
> They aren’t good company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy quarantine, y'all. Hope you're having... fun...
> 
> So, I'd like to fast-track this fic and update more frequently during this whole...viral debacle. Maybe even post once a week! Of course, I don't know long how that's going to last, given _me._ I write veeery slowly—it took me all day just to write the second half of this chapter. I can always set goals, though.
> 
> Guys, trying to get into Vaderkin's head is harder than I anticipated. He's _quite_ the unreliable narrator, and to make it even harder on myself, I'm limiting my POV to his perspective. I think I'm managing alright so far, but I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the end of this chapter. Might rework it later. Let me know what you think!

Trying to escape the Temple’s prison is much more difficult than Vader expected. For all that he was a Jedi—actually, he was one of them just one—no, two—rotations ago— Vader shakes his head, annoyed at the thought. For all that he was once a Jedi, and thus knows most of their tricks, there is simply no strategic advantage in the galaxy that can get him through these bonds, or this Force-damned ray shield. Any chance he has to escape will have to be when the conditions of his confinement change—perhaps a transfer, or an opening left by an interrogator. So all that’s left for him to do, unfortunately, is to think.

Which is the last thing Vader has anticipated doing. When he turned to the Dark Side of the Force, finally leaving behind the Jedi ways and their weakness, he pictured his near future as being filled with action, with battle, conquest, and power—instead of being cooped up in a Jedi cell with nothing but his own thoughts.

They aren’t good company. 

Vader is running out of steam, out of the roaring drive his Dark Side-fueled anger gives him, and he knows it. For a second or two, that thought alone is able to give him a spark of familiar fury—

—before it too dies out, and Vader feels like punching a wall in frustration, but he’s already done so more times than he can count, and his arms are starting to feel the consequences. All that’s left for him to do is pace. Back and forth, back and forth. 

Force, if he has to stay here even ten minutes longer, cut off from the Force, from his lightsaber, from freedom of movement, he is sure he’ll burst. Of course, Vader’s been imprisoned or captured many times before, and he’s never enjoyed the feeling. But why does it feel so excruciatingly awful this time?

Last time… and all those times before that… it was part of the plan, part of a mission, and he had something to strategize about, or some sleemo interrogating him that he could annoy, or—or company.

Vader’s mind only has time to summon forth a few broken images of comrades from former war campaigns—Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Padmé— _Padmé_ —before he scrunches his eyes shut and slams down a barrier in his mind, the one preventing him from thinking about all those people who he would once do anything for, but who left him, who spurned him, who _betrayed_ him. Anakin Skywalker was weak to trust them.

In a roundabout way, the Jedi were right all along. Attachments would only ever hold you back, or bring you pain. It’s such irony that Vader almost gives a bitter laugh at the thought.

Yes, he has learned so much in these past few rotations. He found out the hard way what a former master—

— _brother,_ Kenobi’s voice shouts, full of raw agony—

—can do. Vader’s mechanical fist tightens as he once again feels the phantom burns, slowly eating their way through him as he screamed.

Kenobi made his true colors clear. He could pretend to care about Vader all he wanted, but that didn’t stop him from leaving his former padawan in misery, roasting alive. Kenobi did the unforgivable. Vader doesn’t want to see him again, unless it’s at the other end of Vader’s lightsaber, the life slowly draining from his eyes.

Suddenly, the _whoosh_ of elevator doors opening sounds somewhere to Vader’s right, where he knows the connection to the rest of the floors of the Temple to be. Vader pauses where he stands, rigid and listening. He tries not to acknowledge the infuriating hope he feels at the idea of _someone,_ even a Jedi, coming to talk to him.

The soft footsteps of his visitor draw closer, until Vader’s finally able to catch a glimpse of who it is—and all of Vader’s thoughts are promptly consumed by rage as he sees that it’s _Kenobi_ himself who has come back to taunt him. Vader snarls, his supply of fury back in full force. 

For a moment, the coward doesn’t even deign to speak to him, his eyes searching, questioning. Finally, he speaks, voice almost a whisper. 

“Anakin, what happened to you?”

Vader almost screams at Kenobi _exactly_ what happened to him, until he’s stopped at the last second by the small part of his mind that remains rational amidst his swelling rage. Not only does this Kenobi not know what happened at Mustafar, but it would also be to Vader’s strategic advantage if he were to withhold that information. Yes, Kenobi _ought_ to know the pain he caused, his _betrayal_ of his “brother”—

—but Vader settles for sniping, “Wouldn’t you like to know,” hoping the heat of his scowl can communicate enough.

Kenobi studies him for another long moment, before his posture subtly shifts, assuming the usual air of reserved, polite dignity Vader didn’t realize he was missing until now. “Really, Anakin, I’m trying to understand,” he starts, his voice clearer, his consonants more pronounced. “Those who use the Dark Side are but blind devotees to a purveyor of empty promises. I didn’t think you were the type.” 

Vader snorts. “Like the Jedi are any different,” he sneers. How rich, coming from Kenobi. The blindest devotee of them all.

Kenobi only gives Vader a raised brow—the one he knows all too well. “I fail to see how you exclude yourself from that accusation, seeing as you were one just last night.”

Gritting his teeth, Vader bites back the urge to punch the ray shield as his insides roil with fury. Vader knows exactly what’s going on here. Kenobi’s quibbling with him on semantics, catching him in the traps of his words—he’s turning his Negotiator routine on his own former padawan. Yet another betrayal. Vader’s mind whites out again, hazy with anger. He does not have the patience to deal with this. 

“Enough!” Vader spits. “Why are you here?”

Kenobi looks caught off guard, his shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. “Why am I here? Where else would I be?” Vader, affronted by yet another attempt by Kenobi to pretend that he cares, almost fits in a retort, but then Kenobi continues, his voice rising. “Anakin, this is outrageous. People simply don’t become Sith Lords overnight. Such an assertion implies training, and a master—in fact, it implies apprenticeship to _the_ Master, and yet you have never shown any sort of inclination towards the Dark Side before—“

Vader scoffs. “Oh, really,” he drawls. “Never?”

There is a moment of silence as Kenobi lowers his eyes. Again he has the nerve to look hurt, when _he_ was the one who didn’t care to know Vader well enough, if he didn’t see the signs. Or, as is looking more likely, from Kenobi’s weathered face, he did, and chose to ignore them, to pretend as if Vader’s moments of righteous fury would pass.

Vader knows now he was only scratching the surface of his true power then. Kenobi will never understand. 

“Anakin, even when you came close to crossing the line, I believed you would come back to the right path, because you were—you are a good person,” Kenobi pleads. “Every time, it was always because…” He strokes his beard, before his eyes widen, and his gaze meets Vader’s. “Because you wanted to protect someone you love.”

Vader chokes out a short laugh, filled with malice. “Are you preaching attachment to me?” he snarls. “After all this time? How hypocritical. But that’s an ordinary thing, for you.”

Kenobi doesn’t take the bait, his eyes still firmly fixed on Vader’s. “Anakin, I won’t pretend that I didn’t notice your attachments. And—“ he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I won’t deny that I have my own.”

This catches Vader off guard, so much that he doesn’t interrupt. He thought he’d never see the day when Kenobi admitted something of this magnitude. 

“Perhaps…” here Kenobi pauses, seemingly about to continue, before thinking better of it, and pressing his mouth into a thin line. “The point is, I am not against there being another way for you, Anakin. Perhaps the Jedi were not equipped to fulfill your needs. But if that’s true, the Sith surely are not. You must reconsider.”

Vader glares. “You think I _need_ attachments, old man? I’ve learned better. _You_ cured me of that,” he spits out, before he can think better of it, avoid giving away too much. 

But Kenobi only closes his eyes, putting on an infuriating air of sadness. “I don’t know what I have done to injure you so, but for what it’s worth, Anakin, I am truly sorry.”

Injure. _Injure._ Vader wants to scream. “You don’t get to be sorry!” he yells, slamming his bound hands into the ray shield, previous pain forgotten. “You—“

No, forget it, Vader is done with this bantha poodoo. He gives the barrier one more shove, hatred burning as he stares Kenobi down, before he turns his back, retreating into his cell. “I’m done talking to you.”

For a moment, there’s blessed silence, and Vader thinks he’s won out, that Kenobi will leave him alone. But then he hears Kenobi’s voice behind him say, “I still can’t pretend to know what has made you feel this way. But if you will not talk to me, will you at least consider speaking to Padmé?”

Vader feels a jolt run up his spine. For an agonizing moment, before he can stop himself, he remembers what it felt like to love her. His mind’s eye conjures up her lovely visage, brown, lash-rimmed eyes filled with concern, as she reaches to place a hand to his cheek. He wants nothing more than to lean into the touch, to lean into the love she projects through the Force—

Vader blinks, and remembers her betrayal, how she sided with Obi-Wan over him, how she brought his old master to kill him. His fury comes crashing back, but this time it doesn’t feel intoxicating, only filled with sour, aching pain. He whirls on Kenobi. “YOU WILL NOT INVOKE HER NAME!”

Kenobi still stands his ground, studying his former padawan. A small part of Vader registers that he can’t tell what sort of look Kenobi has on his face, Vader’s vision blurred with tears he refuses to acknowledge, but he can imagine it still projects that same, phony pain. Vader curls his fists, digging his nails into his palms. He’s glad he can’t see it. He doesn’t want to see it.

“Very well, then,” Kenobi says at last, voice almost soft enough to be a whisper. He turns as if to leave, but at the last second, pauses, glancing over his shoulder. “But Anakin—I won’t give up on you yet.”

Vader watches as Kenobi’s blurry form drifts back to the elevator, refusing to tear his eyes away until he’s sure the other man is gone. Once he’s been left well and truly alone, he covers his eyes with his hands and lets his knees buckle, his back sliding against the wall of his cell until he’s sunk down to the floor. He’s too tired to try and harness his emotions, so he lets them run their course. Together, his rage and pain carry him into unconsciousness.

***

It’s not a restful sleep.

Vader’s never been the sort to seek out Force visions through meditation. For one, he’s pretty sure he was never able to reach the level of deep immersion in Jedi meditation he was supposed to. Not that that’s a bad thing, now—better that he didn’t let himself be brainwashed by the feeble doctrines of the Light Side. For another… whenever Vader did have visions, they were always dire and disturbing warnings, causing him to wake in a panic, afraid for the ones he loved.

And they always came true.

The vision that finds him is, unfortunately, in the same vein. He can’t recall how it starts, but before he knows it, he’s been plunged back into the same, terrible vision of Padmé’s demise that has tortured him for months, now. He always hears her screams of pain, her face contorted in terror, and sees the cool pallor of death in her cheeks. Except—this time, the details are much clearer, unfolding as one long scene, instead of as garbled moments and sounds.

Padmé’s lying in the med bay of a ship—Vader recognizes it, actually: her Nubian yacht. She’s in the throes of labor, the pain of childbirth wrenching cries from her throat—except they seem less intense than they had before in his dreams. She seems, perhaps, resigned to the pain, her suffering quiet. Despite his determination to be angry with her, this chills Vader more than any of the visions before. It seems both more realistic, and more unlikely. He’s never seen Padmé without a certain steel behind her gaze, a bearing as though she could take on anything.

This Padmé has been drained of her backbone, of her will to go on.

Finally, the med droid reaches down and—and pulls out a baby. Vader’s would-have-been child. It’s alive. For a moment, he’s transfixed, until he makes himself tear his dream-focus away. He left behind these silly dreams, his dreams of starting a family. However, he’s still stuck in his vision, so he can only watch as Padmé spares a glance at the child, still in pain, and mutters something he can’t hear. For a moment he’s confused—why is her labor not over?—until the med droid, having set down the baby into a crib, reaches down and—delivers another child.

 _Twins._ Vader stares in shock as the other child is ushered away, out of the field of vision of his dream. He would have had twins. A thrill of desperate longing fills him, despite himself. 

Vader doesn’t have time to process this revelation, though, as the vision focuses back in on Padmé. Something’s wrong. Though she’s out of labor, her brow is still furrowed in pain, her breath coming in short gasps. Dread grips Vader. This part—it’s still the same. The Force has still considered it fit to torture him with such an image. Anger rises within him, and he tries with all his mental might to wrench his dream away, but it stays stubbornly put, forcing him to stand by as his former beloved’s strength wanes. Amidst his growing despair and frustration, Vader’s suddenly hit with a terrible idea, one that he knows, with a strange certainty, to be true. 

The Force is trying to show him exactly what happened yesterday. The day he Fell. While he burned on the lava banks of Mustafar, this was the fate Padmé suffered. Stunned, Vader’s fight dies within him, and he simply watches as she takes her final breaths. 

Suddenly, the scene shifts, and an inky blackness swamps Vader’s vision. At first he thinks the dreams have left him, but then the sounds of mechanical whirring fade in, and vague, dark shapes materialize to his left and his right. A source of white light appears, far away now, but coming closer as his dream swoops nearer. He’s in some sort of dark bunker. There are control panels, and med droids, and—

—and the cloaked form of his Master enters, carrying something in his arms. Vader tries to repress an initial thrill of fear at the sight of Sidious’s hideous visage. His Master has only been good to him, merciful, even, as he taught him the powerful ways of the Dark Side, so that he might increase his strength. And—Vader realizes with a start as the form Sidious carries becomes clearer—his Master saved his life.

Vader can barely recognize himself, he is so covered in burns. They run from the ends of his severed legs, up his torso, to his arms—both also stunted, quite possibly burned off—and up to his face. He has no more hair, simply mottled burns all around his head. A deeper horror than he’s ever felt wells within him, and then turns to blinding rage. _This_ is what Kenobi did to him. His desire—no, his _need_ to kill the bastard grows even stronger as the med droids flit around his broken form, prodding and slicing. But then they start replacing him–well, even more of him—with metal.

Vader’s anger dulls into a numb dismay as he watches himself disappear into cool, black, robotic armor. It looks heavy. No, it looks _suffocating._ Nothing is done to ease his pain, either, every new piece attached leaving him moaning and twitching in agony. When the machines are finally done with him, they have turned him into one of their own. Vader looks into those dark, soulless circles that are supposed to serve for his eyes, set within that lifeless, skull-like mask, and realizes that this is what he would have become. More machine than man.

For the first time, he’s truly grateful for the chance at a do-over.

As Vader watches himself take his first breath in the awful suit—a mechanical _koo-hiss_ that makes him want to shudder—he sees his Master approach him to see the handiwork of the droids —and Sidious is grinning in glee.

Vader forces himself to remember that this is the way of the Dark Side—only power is recognized, not mercy. As a Sith Apprentice, it will be his destiny to attempt to overthrow his Master, and thus anything that would weaken Sidious’s future opponent would be a welcomed advantage. But Vader still can’t help the feeling of hurt at the sight.

Once the operation is finished, Sidious speaks up, his rasping voice no less terror-inducing than his face. “Lord Vader, can you hear me?” 

“Yes, Master,” Vader watches himself answer, obedient. Then, with hesitation clear despite the mask over his face, he continues. “Padmé. Is she… is she safe?”

Vader understands the impulse. Despite her betrayal, it is hard to keep the vestiges of his former feelings for her under wraps. It is a moment of weakness he’ll especially allow this counterpart of his, after such a traumatic transformation.

But Sidious’s eyes only hold mock sympathy. “It seems, in your anger, you killed her.”

A surge of shock runs through Vader. His Master _lied._ He wasn’t the one—he didn’t kill her.

Why would Sidious lie? What would he have to gain from it?

And how, then, did Sidious know she was dead?

Questions continue to swirl through Vader’s mind as he watches his helmeted counterpart break through his restraints and crush a medical droid in rage. As the vision starts to fade, Vader probes at the Force, wondering if this scene, too, was one that would have truly occurred following the events of Mustafar.

A cold confirmation sinks through him, and then his consciousness returns.

Vader starts awake, spine going rigid, an action that nearly sends him toppling over, since he can’t balance himself properly with bound hands. He shifts his weight so he is leaning forward in a sitting position, breath coming fast and heavy.

He doesn’t know what to make of any of this. It should be irrelevant to him. As a servant of the Dark Side, and of his Master, he’s supposed to plan to escape, and then help his Master execute once more the end of the war and the demise of the Jedi. His own personal comfort has no place in this. Padmé has no place in this. Neither do his children. In fact, all of his former attachments betrayed him—they made the side they took clear. He shouldn’t dwell on them, or spare them any more thought, except perhaps to kill them for their treachery.

But part of him knows that he’s lying to himself, if he thinks these goals are truly where his heart lies. He can’t keep his love for Padmé buried for long, and nor can he stop himself for longing after his child—now _children_ —and he hates himself for it.

Still alone with nothing but his thoughts, but unwilling to go back to sleep, lest the Force send him more visions, Vader rests his head back on the wall and stews.

***

Before too long, the sound of the elevator whirring reaches his ears once more, and Vader scrambles to his feet, wanting to get a good look at whoever is coming down to visit.

It’s Kenobi again, to his dismay. Vader’s lip curls as he glares at the approaching Jedi. “I thought I told you to go away!” he shouts.

Kenobi just purses his lips and keeps coming. When he reaches Vader’s cell, he stands up straight, meeting Vader’s eyes head-on, just as he did before. 

“I’m not here for myself, Anakin,” he starts. There’s a pause, and his expression shifts into something unreadable. “I come with—news.”

Vader continues to glare as Kenobi reaches into his pockets to pull out—a holoprojector. Before Vader can ask what he plans on doing with it, an image flickers to life.

It’s Padmé. She’s lying on a hospital pallet, wrapped in blankets. And on her lap, she’s holding two babies. 

His babies. The twins.

She delivered them, and she’s alive.

His family is alive.

Frozen as he is, gaping at the twins, he almost misses Padmé’s words as she starts to speak.

“Ani, I… I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but… I wanted you to see them.” Her brown eyes are filled with love and concern, and Vader basks in her gaze. “I thought we’d name them together, but—” she swallows, breaking eye contact. She adjusts her cradling hold on the twins, bringing them forward. “This is Luke,” she murmurs, turning her loving eyes on the babe she holds in her left arm, before she turns to the bundle in her right. “And this is Leia.” 

_Luke. Leia._ He drinks in the names of his children, barely allowing himself to breathe. 

“Say hello to your daddy,” Padmé whispers, and her gaze drifts back to his. He sees the hope in her eyes, the worry. _Come back to me, to us,_ she seems to say.

He can’t find the words to respond. If his family is alive, in this timeline, when he has been removed from the situation, and the galaxy has not fallen to his Master’s control…

He thinks back to his dream. Padmé delivered her children in pain, yes, but it was a healthy birth. Now that he thinks about it, he remembers feeling something unnatural in the Force, there in the ship. He recalls the pallor of her face as she weakened, struggling against some other force, even after her labor had finished—

Suddenly, he knows what had killed her. Or, more accurately, _who._

Sidious had sucked up her strength to repair Vader’s own.

His emotions reel at the revelation. The part of him that is intimately acquainted with the Dark Side, the Vader part of him, wants nothing more than to rush to the Senate building, find Sidious, and kill him. _You promised me the power to save her, but YOU killed her. I will burn every inch of your skin with my saber while you watch._ He’ll never follow Sidious again. He shakes with hatred for his former Master.

But the part of him that still remains Anakin Skywalker, the part of him he’s been denying still exists, is slowly resurfacing, and this part of him hates only himself. He’s living the proof, right now, that if he hadn’t Fallen, gone blindly along with Sidious’s schemes, Padmé would have lived. Even if he hadn’t killed Padmé personally, the day of his Fall, his actions surely had. 

It doesn’t even occur to any part of him that he is supposed to hate Padmé for a contrived betrayal. He looks into her eyes, his tears blurring her beautiful face, and all he can feel is his love for her, and his fledgeling family.

Only, he can’t be with them like this.

His focus turns back to the holo in front of him. Wiping his eyes clean of tears as best he can with his bound hands, he stares from one babe to another, memorizing their features. _Luke. Leia._

Then he looks back at his wife’s face. “Padmé,” he tries, voice hoarse. “I—”

And then the grief of what he’s lost overwhelms him, and his voice breaks into a heaving sob. One sob soon becomes many, and he collapses to his knees, each choking breath wracking his body. At some point, the edges of his vision register that the holo is gone, and along with it, Obi-Wan’s burning stare. The Vader part of him wants to be angry that they left him, but instead, he only bawls harder.

He is alone again. A fitting fate for one who believed himself to be betrayed by his love, but who was in fact the biggest traitor of them all.

Sitting in his cell, he cries and cries until he has no more tears to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, screw it, I got sick of Anakin's Vader-ness going on too long. He's still nowhere near redeemed, but I had a bit enough of the constant rage.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at thesernotthedroidsurlooking4!


	3. Up and down and inside out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The loop resets, and Vaderkin is left reeling from the previous rotations' revelations. Not that this rotation will give him any time to process them, either...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made it! It's exactly a week later! ... and hooo boy was that deadline hard to meet. This stuff is super emotionally exhausting to write, folks. I debated waiting to post the chapter until I'd written another scene, but... honestly, who cares about writing consistent chapter lengths anymore. Google may say that the average book chapter is around 4,200 words, but damn it, that's so long. I might as well give you guys cliffhangers instead. :) Kill me later.

_ROTATION 2_

When he wakes up in his own bed again, this time, it takes a second for his sluggish thoughts to process what’s happened, but soon enough, it comes to him. It’s the same rotation all over again.

He can’t muster up enough energy to be anything more than indifferent.

 _Padmé,_ his mind whispers. _Luke. Leia. You failed them._

All at once, the revelations of the past rotation come crashing back, and all of their sorrow with them. He’s so overwhelmed that, for a moment, he thinks he’s going to cry again, but then he finds he doesn’t even have the strength. Turning over in his bed towards the wall, he presses his eyes shut and buries his head in his pillow, wishing he could go straight back to oblivion. He can feel the Force thrumming through him again, a fact which should be a relief, but when he idly reaches for it—

An onslaught of oozing fear, anger, and hatred pours into him, carried along the threads of his connection to the Force. It slithers closer, seductive yet aggressive, offering him the power to assert his will. Yet, something about it reeks of _wrongness,_ and manipulation, and—no. It isn’t right. He has to get it _out—_

Before he can blink, his instincts slam the Force out altogether before _it_ can get any closer. His eyes fly open and he lurches to a sitting position, panting.

It takes him a moment to realize what he’s done. That was the Dark Side. Of course that’s what came to him first. He’s been its student, has been learning it for days.

Why has it never felt so… twisted and _wrong?_

Frowning, he rubs his forehead. With an almost morbid curiosity, he tries again.

Slowly and surreptitiously, he lowers the barrier he’s erected against the Force, bit by bit. Again the oily, putrid darkness slides in, and this time he can just _feel_ its vicious sweet-talk. _Come to me,_ it whispers. _I can give you everything you want._ He almost wants to agree. Yes, with power, he can—

He can—what? Padmé and his children were safe, he’s suddenly reminded. Without his disastrous intervention, without him and his Master—no, _Sidious_ ruining everything. What does he need power for? What more does he want?

The voice of the Dark Side becomes more insistent, and suddenly, its voice morphs into a memory. His hands are bound, the space against his hip where his lightsaber usually lies too light. His insides squelch—he feels vulnerable, trapped. And then the intruding weight of a hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and he feels his body go rigid, attempting to hide a flinch. Then warm breath tickles his ear, and the sense of _violation_ grows stronger. 

“Come now, my pet,” Miraj Scintel, the Zygerrian slaver Queen, murmurs. “With you by my side, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”

Panic floods him, and he _shoves_ her out with as much force as he can muster. He doesn’t stop into he’s sure no tendrils of her reeking, seductive rot remain in his mind. Then, once more, he slams down the barriers in his mind until he is completely cut off from the Force.

Opening his eyes, he scrambles to his feet, idly staring at his hands.

 _What have I done._

Somehow, amidst the blinding hurricane of his passion, he’d managed to miss it. The Dark Side, for all its seductions—and how he hates the feeling of being manipulated, tricked, _used_ —is nothing but another slaver. A master—literally, he thinks, with the bleakest of humor—that he chose _willingly._

And look where it got him. Padmé, Luke, and Leia would have been safe if not for his Fall.

 _What have I done,_ his conscience repeats.

Sidious saw him as nothing more than a tool. One to use to execute his orders, to make dependant on him. His Master had dangled the possibility of saving Padmé in front of the freshly-christened Darth Vader, and then destroyed it, killing her and lying—just to break him, ever the foolhardy apprentice, even more, he realizes. The Dark Side feeds off of pain and anger and hatred—and what could cause those emotions in him better, than to be convinced that he’d killed his beloved?

Sidious had been grooming him as Palpatine to be his apprentice for much longer, actually, the paranoid side of his mind concludes. Ever since—Force, from the time that he was _nine._ Every conversation must have been calculated, to manipulate the Sith Lord’s prey closer to the Dark Side, to his goals. And—Sithspit, the _war._ As Vader, he remembers killing off the Separatist leaders, who had gathered on Mustafar at the orders of Sidious himself. He lead both sides— _stang,_ he started and controlled the whole karking thing. And no one stood in his way—no one could. He was the kriffing _Chancellor_ of the Republic—and still is—

Suddenly, his commlink beeps, interrupting his train of thought. For a moment he pauses, blinking at the flashing light. Then, he scowls and throws it at the wall, crying out in frustration.

His former Sith Master wanted—and still wants—to put not just him, but the whole _galaxy_ in servitude. Sidious is the biggest Force-damned slaver of them all.

He sinks back into his bed, covering his face in his hands. And he followed him, out of his own volition.

A wave of self-loathing rises through him, and he feels like throwing up. What kind of monster does that make _him._

Images of that fateful rotation, the day of his Fall, flash before his eyes, before they settle on the Jedi Temple, as he approaches, with the 501st at his back.

He remembers their faces, with glazed eyes. How all their voices sounded eerily the same.

 _Good soldiers follow orders._

They’d been robbed of their identity, of their will—oh, Force, they were slaves the whole time, weren’t they—

Before he can protest, his mind speeds ahead, and then he watches his saber carve a path of destruction through the Jedi, blood and sparks and screams everywhere, and—and then it’s the younglings, the _children_ his saber is slashing through, the very ones that had trusted him to save them—

Bile rises in his throat, and he grabs the nearest container he can find—a basket of tools, lying haphazard on his desk—and empties the contents of his stomach into it.

He stoops over it, heaving, for a long time.

He, who is about to become a father, again, if this day goes right, _murdered children._

Something snaps within him, and he stands up abruptly, beginning to pace. No. He can’t think about it. He can’t think about it anymore. It’s all too much.

How had so much gone wrong in the course of one rotation? He thinks he understands, now, why the Force reset the day of his Fall. It undid all the ways in which he completely kriffed everything up. All the multifarious, murderous, depraved ways. He’s a terrible, horrible person. If the Force wanted to fix everything, it should have just gotten rid of him. He followed a slaver, became one himself, and then used his power to kill _children._ Why didn’t it? Why didn’t it kill him? It would have been completely justified. Probably better for the galaxy. 

His breath is coming fast now, too fast, and the walls feel like they’re closing in on him. He sinks to his knees, holding his head in his hands. It’s all too much. Everything is too much. Too much, too much—

His eyes stray to his lightsaber, back in its holster by his side. His right hand hovers near it.

Maybe he could fix the mistake the Force made.

Suddenly, there’s a loud _bang_ on his door, and he jolts upward.

“Skywalker!” a voice barks. He recognizes it. It’s Mace Windu. 

He leans his head back, scrunching his eyes shut. _No no no no no, why now. Whyyyy now._ He wants to scream. Windu is one of the absolute _last_ people he wants to see. The most rigid, most hypocritical Jedi in the Force-damned galaxy, following all of their kriffing rules to the kriffing letter. And that _stare,_ under which he can just _feel_ he’s being judged. His breathing quickens even more, a flash of anger rising within him. Windu’s one of the people he’d be _just fine_ with seeing dead—again—

Without warning, his mind flashes back to the rotation of his Fall, and he watches himself slice Windu’s hand off, watches him writhe with pain as Sidious electrocutes him, laughing, watches him fall out the window, his eyes wide with _betrayal—_

His eyes fly open, and panic floods him. Another person. Another person he’d just as good as killed—and he’s _right there_ behind the door—

“Skywalker!” Windu shouts, and the man in question is only barely able to scramble to his feet before the Jedi grandmaster barges in, scowling.

Force, the stare is as piercing as ever. He straightens his back, trying to force down all of his emotions. For a moment, the panic rises right back up as he realizes—what if he’s bleeding everything out into the Force, and Windu can sense what’s going on? Is his shielding airtight?—and then remembers that he shut himself out of it this morning. Only partially assured, he swallows and attempts to meet Windu’s eyes.

“You weren’t answering your comms,” Windu states flatly, by way of explanation. He raises a brow. “Is there anything important you’d like to share?”

Another spark of fear lights within him, and he squelches it before—he hopes—anything can show on his face. “No, Master Windu, I—” He swallows again. “No.”

Windu studies him for an agonizing second. His thoughts are still spiraling— _not now not now can’t deal can’t deal what if he finds out what I’ve done_ —and he has to clamp his mechanical hand over his left to prevent it from shaking. Then, Windu takes a deep, put-upon sigh. “Council meeting. Five minutes. If you want to be part of it so bad, you’ll drag your ass down there, understand?”

He nods as quickly as possible, even as his mind reels. Council. That’s right, he was part of the kriffing Jedi Council, until everything went to—well, whichever of the nine Corellian hells is the worst one. Not that he was made a Master—since none of those old buffoons would ever trust him—

He almost misses it as Windu strides out of his room, cloak billowing behind him. “Don’t be late, Skywalker!”

The door slides shut with an echoing _thud._

He realizes, too late, that he’s just essentially agreed to go to—well, pretty much the last place in the whole karking galaxy that he wants to be. A Council meeting of the Jedi. _As_ one of them—as Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, representative of the Chancellor—

_Sidious._

He chokes. This is the meeting in which he gets a summons from the Chancellor. A summons in which Sidious takes him to the opera, and tries to swindle him with his pretty lies, that he can save Padmé. The sleemo. As if he wouldn’t turn right back around and _murder her._

With a cry, he drives his fist into the nearest wall, not caring if it dents. Damn it—and after everything, the Sith is still alive, still plotting. Still poised to make everyone in the whole galaxy his _slave._

He wants to scream until his throat is raw. He wants to hop into his starfighter and fly straight into the nearest star. He wants to collapse right back on his bed and cry.

He doesn’t know what to make of anything anymore. Within the span of three rotations—well, according to his perspective, that is—the galaxy has been turned upside down, and then inside out, until he has no idea who is right and who is wrong. The Jedi were right, they had to be, they raised him, but then the Sith were right, the Jedi were weak, and they couldn’t save Padmé, but then _now_ the Sith are karking _slavers,_ and he knows that slavers are bad, they’re always bad, except who even are the slavers anymore, if the Jedi had been using the clones all along—

— _Good soldiers follow orders,_ his mind supplies, and he shudders—

—but whatever the case, he’s been both of them, and he’s been a part of the slaving, the killing, and that makes him the worst of all of them. Except Sidious, perhaps, who still holds the strings to the Separatists, to the Republic, to the Senate, to even the Force-damned Jedi Council, though the idiots are too blind to see it. It’s all hopeless. So, so _karking hopeless._

Unless Sidious were to meet his very, very timely death.

His mind latches on to it, a single beam of hope amidst the swirling chaos that threatens to drown him. It’s the only thing that’s made sense this whole morning. He doesn’t need to be a Jedi, or a Sith, doesn’t need to know where he stands to know that Sidious is a poisonous leech who can’t be left alive any longer. Sidious started the war. Sidious caused death and destruction all across the galaxy. Sidious made everyone his slave.

Sidious killed Padmé.

Yes, he's clear on this, if nothing else. Sidious needs to be removed from the situation, at all costs. To protect the galaxy. To protect Padmé, Luke, Leia. It doesn’t matter what happens to himself in the process—he doesn’t deserve to live, anyway. Better that he takes the shriveled bastard with him. 

He bursts through the door and rushes off in the exact _opposite_ direction from the Council chamber. Let the Jedi have their silly meeting. It won’t matter, after all, if Sidious has just been playing both sides of the war anyway.

He takes the fastest speeder in the hangar and is gone before they even notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I still think I might go back and edit this. Force, this is hard.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at thesernotthedroidsurlooking4!


	4. You're going down with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the moment of truth. He's going to kill Sidious or die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Remember how I claimed I'd start updating weekly during quarantine?
> 
> ..yeah. *John Mulaney voice* And then I didn't.
> 
> Real talk, though, online classes are kicking my butt. Not because they're harder—it's just that much easier to get so distracted. I couldn't even focus properly on writing, even though I was trying so hard to get an update in on May the Fourth (or at the very least, the Revenge of the Fifth!) Sigh. Well, I'm here now. And I avoided the onslaught of fics on those two days, I guess, so... yay?
> 
> Nah, just wishful thinking. But thanks for sticking around, guys. May the Force be with you, two days late and all.
> 
> Random tidbit: I had this chapter titled as "It's Kamikaze time" on my doc. Just gonna leave that there.

Piloting a speeder through Coruscant traffic at an ungodly speed is far more difficult without the use of the Force. He’s never quite realized just how much he relied on his Force senses before, and it’s a constant annoyance now, as he attempts to keep his— _urgent_ pace, one that’s probably violating a hundred traffic laws. He bites his lip as he’s forced to swerve to the right, missing a head-on collision by mere inches. He would have sensed that danger coming if he was using the Force…

… but his gut still clenches in fear at the idea of letting it back in, of feeling that awful _wrongness_ the Dark Side left in him, last time. Scowling, he revs the engines of the speeder. Not yet.

 _You’ll have to, if you want to fight Sidious,_ the rational side of his mind admonishes.

He handily ignores it, cutting a wild, diagonal path through three lanes of traffic to the shortcut alleyway he wants. Indignant cries and wailing horns follow in his wake. He huffs in frustration.

They’ll all be dead, or subjugated, if he doesn’t get rid of the poison at the heart of the Republic, anyway. They should thank him, really.

Finally, he reaches the Senate building. Allowing his speed to slow, he drifts closer—before realizing that he’d unconsciously taken his usual route to Padmé’s apartment.

His speeder slows to a halt as he stares at the balcony. She might be in one of her meetings, or she might be in there—unaware that she would give birth today. To _twins._ The sight of Luke and Leia, colored blue through the hologram, resurfaces before his eyes. He wants to go to her, to relish in the good news, to protect his family from anyone who would dare to bring them harm—

—a category that includes himself. He presses his lips together, tearing his gaze away. He can’t see Padmé. She doesn’t deserve him like this—he wouldn’t do it to her. 

He urges his speeder, more gently this time, to a more general side entrance.

Once inside, he tries to keep his head down. He doesn’t have time for any sort of side conversation. Mercifully, few notice him today, and those who do don’t attempt to engage him past a nod from what he’s certain is his worst attempt at a Serene Jedi Face yet. Thank the Force—he’s anything but serene, and he knows it. The closer to Sidious’s office he gets, the more a jittering sort of fear threatens to rise up from his stomach and close around his throat. 

Every time, he tamps it back down, resorting to the steely determination that’s carried him through countless battles by now. Sidious will be gone by tomorrow, or he’ll perish trying. 

Finally, he reaches the elevator that’ll take him to Palpatine’s—Sidious’s office. The doors close him in, leaving him in solitude.

He swallows down another bubble of panic. It’s now or never. He needs to let the Force back in.

Closing his eyes, gripping onto a steel bar on the side of the elevator to steady himself, he pours his presence into his shields. He needs to be sure they’ll hold. Once (barely) satisfied, he opens his senses, by just a crack, to the Force. 

As he expected, it’s the Dark that slithers forth first, but— _no,_ the crack widens, the floodgates opening, and it rushes in far too fast to control it. Panic rises in him, which only fuels the growing Dark, and he starts to choke on the potency of the fear, turning rapidly to anger, to hate. He feels like he’s drowning in it, drowning in this hatred that needs an outlet, that’s directing itself more and more towards that vile sleemo, Sidious, who he wants to kill, to torture, to crush beneath his heel, to make the bastard feel his power, more than _anything—_

 _No,_ the rational part of him chokes, _not this way. I can’t fight him on his own terms. If I do, he has won, and I’ll be his slave—_

At that word, the fury in him explodes outward, the elevator beginning to rattle with the force of it. _HOW DARE SIDIOUS! SLAVER SCUM! I’LL RIP HIM LIMB FROM LIMB!_

 _STOP!_ his conscience gasps, and its voice is beginning to sound far more like Obi-Wan than he wants to admit. _You must not succumb—find the Light, Anakin, grab onto anything that’s Light, and for Force’s sake, HOLD ON!_

His heartbeat thuds, his panic spiking as all the memories of using the Light Side of the Force slip away, swept away by the current of the Dark. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to go back to the Light, necessarily, but now he’s losing it, he’s losing the chance he has to keep his head, his freedom, and it terrifies him. _Fierfek, kark, kark, kark, what do I do, what do I do—_

A memory, from the last rotation. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s visage greets him, and he has to _shove_ away the tidal wave of fury that rears its head at the reminder of his face. He scrunches his eyes shut in concentration, focusing on the words the apparition speaks. _Anakin, even when you came close to crossing the line, I believed you would come back to the right path, because you were—you are a good person. Every time, it was always because…_

_Because you wanted to protect someone you love._

Love. 

Kenobi was right, he has to admit. In the past, his love had always been his downfall, yet… yet it was always why he came back. Because how could he fear, when he had Rex and—and Obi-Wan, protecting his back. Because how could he be angry, when he had his own padawan, Ahsoka, to take care of, to comfort. Because how could he hate, when he had a family—Padmé, _Luke, Leia_ —Force, if he’s honest, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, Rex, Cody, the whole karking 501st, too—to love. 

His heart swells at the memories of their faces, of all the joy he felt from being together with them, back when he was still Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight, and pushes away the Dark, as it screams out how they betrayed him. He’ll deal with that later. Right now, he grasps on to the memories, clinging desperately to the way he feels when he recalls them. His family. He loves his family. He nurses the feeling, using it to push out the Dark, and then tethers himself to it, letting it anchor his presence in the Force. He keeps going until he feels sure that the Dark won’t rush back in. 

Taking a deep breath, he opens his eyes. The Force breathes with him, a shuddering in, then out. The Dark skirts around the edges of his consciousness, still whispering its false promises, but it’s no longer trying to come in, at least. That’ll do for now. The Light… it doesn’t feel the same as he’s used to, somehow. It seems almost… more active, a living presence like the Dark was, but it soothes and comforts, and he leans into its touch.

 _I’m here,_ it whispers. _It’s alright. Breathe. I’m here._

Then, there’s an intruding brush against his mental shields, and it takes him a second to realize his bond with Obi-Wan must be back. Kenobi must have felt the upheaval. His mood sours, and he quickly puts up his walls. Force damn it, would the old man just stay out of his business? He’s not ready to deal with him.

After a couple of blissful moments of quiet, he straightens, trying to get his bearings.

The elevator has long since come to a stop, it seems. During his struggle, he must have collapsed on the floor, because he’s looking out the elevator doors from quite the low angle. Embarrassed, he scrambles to his feet, brushing himself off. He creeps to the front of the elevator, looks both ways to see if he’d been noticed in such a state, finds nothing, and slips out. 

As soon as he starts back on his journey to Palpatine’s office, however, the weight of his chosen mission slams into him once more, and he has to shove back a tendril of the Dark Side that slinks towards him with his fear. Palpatine. _Sidious._

He’s got to stick to his purpose, he reminds himself. He’s here for a reason. The Sith Master must not be left to live, not at all costs. He doesn’t care how powerful the shriveled snake is, he’s going down—

Then, it hits him. There’s no way Sidious didn’t feel any of the noisy projecting in the Force that he just did. _E chu ta,_ he gasps, panic spiking once more. If Sidious felt all that, he’ll know his vulnerability to the Dark, maybe even his attachments—Force—

—and some of the Dark oozes past his defenses again, mingling with his fear. He kicks it out again, frustration rising. Force damn it, he’s got to keep it together! He doesn’t have time for this! 

He reaches for the Light instead, but now, it’s humming a steady warning. _Danger, danger, stop,_ it whispers. Groaning, he gives his head a shake. He doesn’t have time for that, either.

Swallowing, he raises his awareness once more, and realizes he’s now in the hallway in front of Palpatine’s office. He bites down his fear and fixes the doors with a steely glare.

It doesn’t matter now, whatever Sidious knows. He’s not letting the Sith have reign over the galaxy any longer than he can abide it. He’ll put an end to it all now, if it’s the last thing he does. 

The rational part of his mind has joined in with the warnings the Light Side has been giving him, begging him to slow down and reconsider, but finally it quiets in the face of his determination. _Remember what the Light feels like, and keep holding on,_ the Obi-Wan voice in his head reminds him instead, and he knows it’s right. _If you use the Dark, you'll be Sidious’s slave again. He’ll win._

He grabs hold of the Light, using it to bolster his shields, still ignoring its alarm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he knows. It’s dangerous. No matter—the task wouldn’t be worth doing if it wasn’t. He brushes his right hand against his lightsaber, its presence stilling some of his trepidation. He’s got his tools to fight, he’s all here.

It’s time.

 _For my family,_ he promises, and he opens the doors.

***

He’s already off to a bad start the moment he sees Palpatine. 

The Force-damned Sith Lord is sitting at his desk, far from the door—out of immediate reach—with that stupid, grandfatherly smile plastered on his wrinkled, punchable little face. A wave of pure rage barrels through him— _Padmé’s killer_ — and he has to slam up his mental shields and give the Dark Side another shove as far away from him as possible. His mechanical fist tightens in frustration. _Sithspit,_ he’s nearly just compromised himself, losing the element of surprise. In a gesture that he hopes isn’t too late, he doubles over to hide his face, pretending to cough.

“Ah, my boy, are you quite alright?” Palpatine’s voice intones. He grits his teeth at the sound, before giving another heaving cough for good measure. 

“I’m fine,” he chokes out, racing to school his features into a reasonably pleasant expression. He unfurls himself, begrudgingly looking the Sith Lord in the eye. Sidious is drifting closer, looking the picture of mild concern.

 _Yeah, I’ll bet he’s concerned,_ his mind drawls. _Concerned that his little investment might not be well enough to do his dirty work._

“Are you sure? I was told you missed a Council meeting,” Palpatine continues. “The masters did not appear very happy—though I’m sure you wouldn’t have cancelled without good reason.”

He tries not to glare—Force, how did he not see all of these blatant attempts at manipulation before—but forces his face to stay frozen. Sidious isn’t in range. He’s got to spitball it just a little longer. 

He clears his throat. “Uh, yes, yes I do,” he starts. “Have a good reason. I, uh…”

Stang, he’s never been good at acting. Or lying. Or politician-ing in general. Obi-Wan always took care of that part—

His mind darkens, and he scrambles to try to keep his disgust from reaching his face. Yes, Kenobi was quite good at all of this bantha poodoo. He’d always stretch the truth, so it was never _quite_ a lie. And they always believed him all the more. How merciful of him.

Biting down his bitterness, he follows his old Jedi Master’s example, because he’s got no better ideas. “I had a vision,” he starts, allowing some of his discomfort through to his face. “It was more of a nightmare.” All true.

“Oh, Anakin,” Palpatine coos, taking a couple steps further. He tries not to wince at the name—does it truly fit him, after everything?—but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it, as Palpatine keeps talking. “Is this a common thing for a Jedi?”

 _As if you wouldn’t know about Force visions,_ he wants to snarl. He gives himself a mental shake—focus. “Well, uh, not exactly,” he replies. “They’re sort of rare.” 

“Oh?” Palpatine raises an eyebrow. “Forgive me for asking, but, should not then the Council be understanding of such extenuating circumstances?”

“Uh, I didn’t tell them,” he replies. He sizes up the distance between them—still a good six feet. If he really wants to get the drop on Sidious, he’ll have to get closer. Kark.

“And why is that, my boy?” Palpatine’s face appears to soften. “Do you not trust them to believe you?”

He clenches his jaw. Force save him—he’s losing patience. How would he have responded to this drivel before, anyway? 

Probably by opening right up, like the fool he was. Ugh. 

He pretends to slump, though he keeps his peripheral vision fixed on his target, and inches closer, as if in need of comfort. “They wouldn’t listen,” he complains. “Just like last time. With my-my mother.”

He hates how true it is.

Sidious’s robes billow as he makes to close the distance between them—kriffing finally. “Oh dear,” he tuts, “that sounds quite serious indeed.” Four feet. Two feet. His fingers itch for his lightsaber. “If you don’t mind my asking—” 

Palpatine reaches out to place an arm around him, and his instincts _scream._ Kriff it, he’s not doing this any longer. He whips out his lightsaber, ignites it, and aims a stab at the vile bastard’s heart—

—only for it to be met by a red saber—Sidious’s own. 

He stares at it, pulse jumping as the Dark Side licks at the edges of his growing fear. This wasn’t supposed to happen—oh, Force, no. Sidious had either been fast—or ready. _Kriff kriff kriff kriff kriff—_

The Sith Lord leers at him, sickly yellow eyes reflecting the crimson light of his saber as his carefully crafted mask falls away, and his tight shields along with it. Darkness oozes out like black smoke, cold and suffocating, filling the entire room, buffeting his own shields while beckoning his fear, his own Dark shadow to join it, and it’s just like before—

He tightens his grip on his saber and thrusts out his senses for the Light. There’s an agonizing moment of silence, his heart leaping into his throat, drawing more Dark fear with it—before the Light finally responds, pouring in gently. He latches onto it with as much force as he can, and tries to take a breath. 

_DANGER!_ the Light thrums. He winces and turns back to Sidious. 

“My, my,” the Sith Chancellor of the Republic says, the edges of his tone sharpening into something hard and cruel. “Now, what is the meaning of this, _my boy?”_

The only response he gives is a glare. _I’m done talking to you, slaver scum._

Then, he aims a kick at Sidious’s legs, which the Sith Lord sidesteps, releasing their sabers from the lock, and there’s a moment’s pause as the two size each other up. Sidious’s mouth twists into a sickening grin that makes his insides roil.

Fine. He’ll just have to kill the son of a Hutt the hard way.

He charges.

His first strikes are wild and forceful, powered by his rising adrenaline, but Sidious blocks each of them with smooth, yet precise, movements. As the duel slides into a steady rhythm, he realizes Sidious is letting him stay on the offensive, doing the bare minimum to keep any slashes from getting past his guard. 

He growls in frustration—he’s being toyed with. Gathering the Force, he aimes a shove at Sidious, pressing his lips together when he realizes some of the Dark Side got tangled up in it. _Not good, not good..._

Sidious converts the backward momentum into a neat flip, and when he’s recovered, his eyes glitter as he appraises his opponent. “You said you had a vision, did you,” he starts. “Pray tell, what might the contents have been? It must have been— _enlightening.”_

His heart stutters. Sidious noticed the Dark Side he’d used. _Sithspit, of course he’d notice. Why can’t I just keep the Dark Side the kriff away? Kriffing—_

Sidious takes a sudden, inhumanly agile leap, aiming a lethal swipe at his neck that he just barely sees in time to duck. The Sith Lord takes the offensive for the first time, and he’s forced backwards as he races to block a subsequent flurry of jabs at frightening speed. He tamps down a prickle of fear at the virtuosic display. Fierfek, he never was able to watch the old man duel—and he’s an even more skilled enemy than anticipated. Kriff. His ignorance is an advantage the Sith is exploiting now. The volley ends with the sabers skittering into another lock, Sidious’s wicked grin far too close to his face for comfort. 

“You must indulge an old man,” Sidious drawls. “I’m rather curious.”

“None of your business, sleemo,” he snaps. He presses his blade into Sidious’s saber, before using the force of the motion to launch into a backwards somersault. When he comes up with a slash of his saber, Sidious is already there to meet it, and the one after that, and the one after that. He can feel his scowl deepening.

“Oh, I do believe it is,” Sidious continues between blows, as if this is some sort of ordinary political meeting to him. The smug snake. The Sith’s dark grin grows. “I can feel your anger. Yes… am I to assume it’s because of something I’ve done?”

His eyes widen—kark, he’s allowing Sidious to read him too well—and tucks into a sideways roll to put some distance between himself and the Sith Lord. He swallows, taking a deep breath in and tightening his mental anchor to the Light. _Remember who you’re doing this for._

“Believe me, you’ve done plenty,” he declares, jabbing the business end of his blade in Sidious’s direction. “I’m here to put an end to it.”

“Is that so?” Sidious appears, quite annoyingly, unperturbed by the threat. “My boy, surely you must be mistaken. I’m certain we can come to a better understanding.”

And there it is. Of course Sidious is going to try to turn him into his personal lapdog again. His chest tightens with rage. “Not a chance,” he retorts, before charging once more, forcing Sidious to catch a brutal overhead strike with his own saber.

The Sith Lord simply cackles in response. “Such power!” he crows. “Surely, you must feel it. Your anger makes you strong.”

And that’s the problem, isn’t it. He knows how intoxicating the fury of the Dark Side is. He’s never felt so powerful in his life. But-but he knows the moment he lets it in, he loses control, and he becomes its slave. He won’t serve it. He _won’t._

Gritting his teeth, he twists his blade out of the lock and advances, slashing viciously. “I.” _Slash._ “Will.” _Jab._ “Not.” _Slice._ “Be.” _Whirl._ “Your.” _Strike._ “Slave!” He lands a kick to Sidious’s stomach, slamming him against his own desk, but the Sith halts a potential killing blow before it can land. He glares down at his old Master, close enough to feel the heat of the sabers on his face. 

Sidious has the gall to chuckle once more. “Yes, you can be so much more. Never have I seen so much potential— _my apprentice.”_

He snarls, digging his knee further into Sidious’s gut. How _dare_ he pull this again. “I am not yours!”

Sidious simply smirks—and then a wave of cold, Dark power crashes into him, sending him sprawling across the room, landing with a painful thud. No sooner has he scrambled to his feet does Sidious greet him with another furious volley of strikes. Forced on the defensive, he can’t do anything but parry. He scowls in frustration. Force damn it, he just wants to land a kriffing hit, make the old man _bleed,_ for what he’s done to him, for what he’s done to _Padmé—_

“Good, good!” Sidious leers. “Such spite! Use it! Use your anger!”

He starts, a chill running down his spine. Anger. He’d let himself get angry. He extends his senses into the Force, and shivers when he feels a vortex of Dark slowly creeping in, consuming the Light in his Force presence. His heart leaps into his throat. _Stang,_ no, he's got to calm down—

Something slams into him, sending him crashing into a window, his lightsaber clattering away in the opposite direction. He crumples to the floor, groaning. He’d paid for his distraction—he can’t afford to have this problem, not now. _Padmé. Family. You love them. Love. Focus on that. Focus!_

“Yes, yes,” Sidious is saying, his footsteps drawing closer. “What a fine apprentice you’ll make, _Lord Vader.”_

He freezes. 

_Lord Vader,_ the clones, the mind-controlled clones with no kriffing _choice_ called him, as they stormed the Jedi Temple with him and killed _everyone,_ killed _younglings—_

He’s standing up, blade ignited and in his hand, before he even knows what he’s doing. _How dare he._

He may not deserve to be Anakin Skywalker any longer. But he’ll be damned if he ever answers to the hideous title Sidious gave him again.

He throws himself back into the fray with a guttural yell, the blue flash of his saber filling his vision. He’s never serving Sidious again, never, he won’t be controlled by a _slaver,_ a shriveled piece of bantha poodoo deserving of nothing but being fed to gundarks, a vile worm who _murdered his wife,_ who he wants nothing more than to stab right in his vicious, sniveling _face—_

His saber meets air, and he realizes Sidious is sprawled on the floor, some feet away from him, his lightsaber rolling away from his reach. He stalks closer to finish the job.

Sidious lifts his head, smirking. “Excellent work, Lord Vader,” he purrs, before rising to his feet, posture confident, as though he’s completely in control of the situation.

 _And he is,_ the realization hits him like a bucket of ice water. _This is exactly what he wants. He’s played me._

The Force rages Dark all around him.

His lightsaber slips out of his hands, and he sinks to his knees. _No. I can’t become Vader again._

The thought is just enough to call a sliver of Light to him, one he grabs on to, clinging to its warmth. _Help me,_ he asks it once more.

 _I already have,_ the Light replies. _You didn’t listen._

His eyes widen. The warning. _Danger._ He’d thought the Light was simply reacting to the presence of the Sith Lord, alerting him to what he already knew. But the Light—the Light was warning him of the danger within himself. 

_I’m sorry,_ he thinks. _You’re right. I wasn’t ready. I’m still too Fallen. I’ll—I’ll listen now._

_Then get up._

Grasping his lightsaber, he lifts his head and staggers to his feet.

Sidious is sneering at him. He doesn’t have his lightsaber, but he doubts that matters. “Why have you turned to such weakness, my apprentice,” he scoffs. “You must embrace the true power of the Dark Side.”

His features slide into what must be a shaky version of a cocky grin—once his trademark, during his career as the Hero With No Fear. “Been there, done that. It just wasn’t doing it for me.”

Sidious smirks, circling him like the vulture he is. “Oh, I’m afraid I must disagree. You have so much anger, so much hate!” He clenches his fist. “Do not refuse such strength!”

“Sorry,” he replies, trying to keep his breathing even. “No can do.”

Sidious’s eyes darken. “Tell me, then,” he says, an edge of danger creeping into his voice, “how the Jedi would serve you better. They are fools who fear your power.”

He winces inwardly—Sidious’s words have hit too close to home, this time—but he can’t afford to think about that now. He’s got to stand his ground. “It doesn’t matter what they think of me,” he mutters, his mechanical fingers clenching and unclenching on the hilt of his lightsaber. He clears his throat. “I don’t have to be a Jedi to know I’m _never_ joining you.” He ignites his blade, settling into his preparatory stance. He’s trying again, and this time, he’s doing it on his terms.

There’s a pause, as Sidious eyes him. “Very well, then. Such a pity.” 

And then lightning shoots out of Sidious’s hands.

The Light cries out in warning, and he’s just able to angle his blade to catch the initial onslaught. He grits his teeth, arms trembling, as Sidious’s laughter rings in his ears. The sparks arc up and down his saber, growing brighter and wilder—there’s just too much of it, in too close a range—and then a fork slips past, connecting with a savage sting. He cries out, trying to keep his saber hand steady, but it’s convulsing with the rest of his body, as more and more lightening slips past his guard, until it’s pouring in from every direction, sparks of pure _agony,_ and he sinks to the ground, twitching and screaming his throat raw. As his vision blurs, his senses unable to process anything but _pain,_ he wonders if this is it—if he’s failed for the last time. 

_At least the galaxy will finally be rid of me,_ a bitter voice in his mind thinks. _Even if I couldn’t take down Sidious, at least there’s still one less Sith on the loose._

_I’m sorry, Padmé._

He fades into oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...trust me, it's not over. Not yet.


	5. Stick to the script

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, at least he isn't dead. But after his failure, he's wondering if that's a good thing...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, here I am, yet another month-and-a-half later... sorry. I'm trying, y'all.
> 
> Did I mention how awesome the Clone Wars finale was last time? Because... *squeals* it was amAZING and mind-blowing and completely emotionally exhausting... and here I am, writing fanfic as my coping mechanism. The finale definitely helped some things slot into place in my fic. Although, I have to say, it messed up my timing a little—there's apparently a nightfall in between the Council meeting that sends Obi-Wan off to Utapau and Anakin to the Chancellor. Oh, well. It does make more sense that there be multiple days in which all the crazy things that happen in ROTS occur, but for my purposes, that Council meeting happens at the start of that one fateful day.

_ROTATION 3_

And then, his lungs take a heaving, shuddering breath, and he hurtles into awareness, gasping. His eyes dart around. What—where—how—

His bed. The plastisteel walls of his room. Morning light coming through the windows. It’s the same day again. He’s alive. He—

He just died. Force, he just _died._ His breathing quickens, and he holds his head in his hands, terror pressing down on him from all sides. Sidious killed him. Just like that—like it was nothing. He didn’t stand a _chance,_ oh Force, how is he going to get rid of the Sith now—

He sits up, his full body shaking by now. Force, why does it have to be him. He’d almost rather he never woke up. It’s impossible. He wants to save everyone, fix everything, but it’s impossible. Sidious is too strong. He himself is too Fallen. The Jedi Council—well, they still have their heads too far up their asses to get anything done, but that’s nothing new. 

The galaxy is karking doomed.

He heaves a sob—or it is a laugh—and falls backward onto his bed. Hopeless. He feels the Light Side of the Force tremble in concern, and he just wants to scream.

_You said you’d help me,_ he reminds it. _Look where it got me. You should have let me die._

The Light is quick to respond, this time. _NO,_ it fairly screams. Then it fades, the impressions it gives amounting to something like _must keep going,_ and then… some sort of attempt to provide comfort?

He brushes it aside. _Gee thanks,_ he tells it, before he realizes what he’s doing—actually, what he’s _been_ doing, and a hysterical laugh bubbles past his lips. Look at him, he’s talking to the kriffing Force itself. Oh, goodie. 

Just then, there’s a buzz at his door, and he freezes. _Wow. And the prize of Worst Timing in the Galaxy goes to—oh, whoever the kriff that is._ He curls inward, staring resolutely at the wall. Maybe if he ignores them, they’ll go away—

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan Kenobi’s muffled voice calls, followed by a forceful nudge at his end of their shared Force bond. He winces away, a million emotions swirling through his head at the arrival of his old Jedi Master—anger, relief, pain, love—hate. Force, this is even worse than he could have expected.

_Sithspit, not now, not kriffing now—_

The door slides open—curse Kenobi for having a key code—and just like that, his old Master is in the room, at the very moment in which he’d most like the entire galaxy to kindly kriff off. 

“Anakin, what’s wrong?” Kenobi starts, sounding mildly out of breath. “The Force—I didn’t mean to intrude, but—”

“Go away,” he mutters, still refusing to look Kenobi in the eye. 

There’s a pause, and Kenobi’s footsteps creep closer. “Please, Anakin,” he says, more quietly. What I just felt from you was—most unsettling.”

_Unsettling._ The master of the understatement strikes again. “I bet it was,” he retorts.

There’s a sigh. “ _Anakin_ —”

Suddenly, his patience runs out, and he whirls around to glare daggers at Kenobi. “I said go away, didn’t I?” he snaps.

A flicker of hurt flashes across Kenobi’s features, before he settles into a familiar longsuffering look. “If that’s what you wish,” he says. He turns and retreats to the door.

Feeling some of the tension go out of him, but still with a knot of unease he doesn’t want to examine, he turns over, affixing his stare back at the wall. What a lovely start to the day—

“There’s a Council meeting in ten clicks, by the way,” Kenobi’s voice announces, dispelling his thoughts. “Do be sure you’re there.”

Force, he’d forgotten. One _absolutely_ great perk of living the same day, over and over again. “I’m not going,” he grunts.

There’s a moment of silence—he must have caught Kenobi off guard. “Anakin—”

His annoyance spikes, and he lifts his head to look Kenobi in the eye. “I don’t care what any of them say. I’m not going today.”

It takes a couple of seconds of staring for Kenobi to get the memo. His old Master slowly shakes his head. “Whatever this is about, I do hope you remember that your duties do not stop because you shirk them. It would be wiser—”

“Damnit, just GO!” he cries, stifling the urge to throw a pillow at Kenobi, like he did as a padawan. That’s what the lecture is making him feel like, at any rate. A stupid little over-emotional padawan who can never do anything like he’s supposed to. _Sit. Stay. Behave. Bad padawan._

Kenobi lowers his head, and the door slides shut behind him. 

He turns back to his wall. 

Yes. What a _wonderful_ morning. Just him, his thoughts, and the crushing weight of failure. 

Ten clicks later, his commlink blinks, and he uses the Force to crush it without sparing it a second glance. 

Half an hour later, Kenobi prods at their shared Force Bond again, and he slams the connection closed. 

Two hours later, he rolls out of bed—only to use the ‘fresher. He takes his time, pointedly refusing to look in the mirror. When he’s done, he sinks right back into bed.

The memories of the day of his Fall keep running through his head, and this time, he can’t keep them out. He doesn’t try, really. It’s fitting for him to be tortured by the screams of younglings he slaughtered, by Padmé’s face of betrayal as he choked her—even by the angry slashes of his lightsaber as he aimed for the kill against Kenobi. The steam of hatred he feels every time he recalls the bitter end of that duel is sputtering out, bit by bit, as he remembers just who Kenobi was trying to kill. A monster in the thrall of the Sith. As the destruction he wreaked on his family, his friends, and the galaxy plays on repeat, he can’t help but think—who can blame Obi-Wan?

Just when he thinks his mind is out of material, though, it starts to rewind, back to the days before he Fell, when time still ran forward. Slicing through Dooku’s neck. Threatening Trench. Beating Clovis to a bloody pulp. Brutalizing Bariss. Intimidating Fox. Nearly killing “Rako Hardeen”—before it turned out to be Obi-Wan himself. Force-choking informants. Hints of burning lava and hatred from the dreams he calls Mortis. Torturing Poggle. 

Slaughtering Tusken Raiders. 

It’s all the same—it all felt the same, he starts to realize, his horror growing. Like roaring rage. Like a sick sort of power. Like the Dark Side. 

Was there always so much poison in him? 

He thinks he gets it now. Padmé’s tear-streaked face as she begged him to stop, Obi-Wan’s look of hurt and betrayal as he left him on the banks of Mustafar, Ahsoka’s steel-toned voice as she greeted him, even Mace Windu’s ever-disapproving eyebrow. They only left him, stopped trusting him, because he merited every single bit of it. 

The Light Side throbs in sorrowful sympathy.

When, at last, he falls asleep that night, and then wakes up on the same day yet again, he spares barely a thought to decry the fact that he’s _still_ trapped, and then rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling until his eyes unfocus.

It becomes a sort of routine. Wake up. Stay in bed until Kenobi either comms, or comes knocking, and snap at him until he leaves. Bust his commlink. Lie there until he can’t stand it anymore. Fix a droid somewhere in the junk of his room, then burst it apart with the Force. Only leave the room to use the ‘fresher. He’s not even eating, because he knows it can’t kill him, since he keeps on waking up, right as rain, the same karking day—although part of him is still starving himself just in the off chance that it might actually work.

It doesn’t.

He kind of hates the part of himself that’s relieved when he doesn’t die.

***

_ROTATION 8_

“—there _does_ happen to be a Council meeting in ten clicks, and I wouldn’t have figured you’d forget, Anakin,” Obi-Wan scolds him, right on script. 

Right about now is usually when he tells Kenobi to shove off, more forcefully this time. And then, Kenobi’s supposed to give him an infuriatingly concerned glance, followed by the patented ‘shirking duty’ lecture again, and then he’s supposed to shout at him to _go away, damn it,_ and then Obi-Wan is supposed to do exactly that, with nothing more than a mournful backward glance.

Suddenly, he hates the script. His temper whooshes out of him, and he sits back down on his bed, cradling his head in his hands.

Obi-Wan takes a step forward amid the silence. “Is there something wrong?”

He lifts his head, looking Obi-Wan in the eye. His old Master has that look of concern back on his face. While Vader had dismissed that look as false, back when he was rotting in his cell, he’s had some time to clear his head. Just enough to feel Obi-Wan’s worry in the Force, despite how shuttered he’s keeping their bond, to know it now to be genuine. Obi-Wan cares about him—as little as he might deserve it.

He also happens to know, though, that if he says nothing now, Obi-Wan won’t pry further, though he’ll still worry over him for the rest of the day. Jedi aren’t good at talking about feelings, after all. No, instead, they let them fester, let those feelings eat them up inside until they burst. Himself included—as perhaps the worst offender of all.

Maybe it’s this thought that drives him to break script.

“I died.”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrows. “What?”

Force, that was probably the worst place to start. He rubs his eyes and blinks, trying to think of how he can possibly put all this into words—

“We’ve always guessed the Force can do a lot more than we’ve seen it do. Right?” He spares a glance up at Obi-Wan, who still looks puzzled, waiting for him to go on. He sighs. “Well. um. This is going to sound crazy, but…”

There’s a few moments of silence as he wracks his brain—and then, suddenly, it just comes pouring out. “I made a mistake. A big one, a few days—well no, technically, it was today. But the Force restarted it. Today, I mean. So, I’ve been re-living the same day, over and over again, um… for over a week, now. I mean, I even died once, and woke back up on the same day again, so there doesn’t even seem to be a way out. It’s probably for the best, though…” 

He checks Obi-Wan’s face again. There’s alarm there, but still no small amount of confusion. He winces. Yeah, he could have said that better…

“What are you saying?” Obi-Wan murmurs, half to himself. “Why—what did the Force—”

His heart sinks. He can’t sugarcoat this. 

“Time travel,” he blurts. “Obi-Wan, I saw the galaxy fall. And it was my fault. The Force sent me back, and I think I have to re-live the same day until I fix it.”

A heavy silence falls on the room, and he can do nothing but simply watch Obi-Wan’s eyes widen in shock and horror. “Oh, _Anakin._ What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Worse than the usual mess, I suppose,” he says, letting out a mirthless chuckle.

A shadow of a frown flickers across Obi-Wan’s face, and he starts to pace, stroking his beard in a familiar expression of concentration. “The galaxy _fell_ —what do you mean by that?”

“Just what it sounds like,” he sighs, gaze falling to his lap. “It fell to the Dark Side. You know about the Sith Master, right?”

Obi-Wan’s footsteps take a sudden halt. “Darth Sidious.”

“And I assume you remember what Dooku said.”

“Sidious, controlling both sides of the war from the start…” He looks up to see Obi-Wan’s hand falling away from his beard. “You saw the culmination of his plan.”

“A Sith Empire.”

“And you know who Sidious is,” Obi-Wan continues, realization dawning. 

He swallows, knowing nothing good can come from the information… yet he can’t keep it quiet. “Palpatine. Sidious is Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.”

He watches Obi-Wan’s face for his reaction… and it’s nowhere near as surprised as he somehow half-expected it to be. He feels a bitter pang in his chest at the confirmation that he was far more gullible than the rest, to have been so thoroughly fooled. 

“Palpatine…” Obi-Wan echoes. “Blast. And he’s perfectly positioned to start a Sith Empire, you say.” He can only nod. Obi-Wan rests a hand on his forehead. “This is far graver than we thought. The Council must hear about this—we need to capture him—“

_Kriff, no!_ Rising to his feet, he clutches Obi-Wan’s shoulder and turns the man to face him, ignoring Obi-Wan’s shock and discomfort at the sudden touch. “No, it won’t work. Not the Council.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes narrow, and he shifts subtly to evade his grasp. “Anakin, surely you can’t—“

“You still don’t know everything! We can’t involve them—“

“He needs to be brought to justice—“

“How do you think I died?”

There’s a moment of silence, and Obi-Wan stills, eyes wide and questioning.

Huffing in frustration, he turns away from Obi-Wan and starts pacing himself. “I tried confronting him. And yeah, I went alone, which was stupid, but Obi-Wan—you don’t understand. The whole time, he was just toying with me. He only let me stay alive as long as he did because—“ He stops for a moment, a thrill of fear igniting at admitting to Obi-Wan the reason why. Damn it, after everything, he still cares, so much, what the old man thinks of him…

He gives his head a shake and resumes his stalk about the room. “And before, on the first day. Mace Windu tried to arrest him. Brought a team of no less than four expert duelists, and you know what? They all _died._ Windu too, though of course—“ _of course, I helped with that._ He runs a hand through his hair, then stops, turning to face Obi-Wan. “If you try now, you’ll be killed or worse. Plus, you don’t even know the half of his plan.”

“What is this plan, then?” Obi-Wan prods. 

He bites his lip, trying to shove down his growing annoyance. Obi-Wan has just heard that he’d _died,_ that he’s been trapped in time by the Force, and all he wants to know is all the crap that Sidious is up to. Not that he’s wrong to, of course. It is the most important part. But where does he even start? It’s so much…

“The clones,” he mutters. Of course. That’s how Sidious took the galaxy, the first time. As long as he holds the trigger to the chips, he has the key. The key to it all. He can swoop in at a moment’s notice…

“The clones? What about them?” Obi-Wan asks, and he’s startled from his train of thought. Right. He needs to explain… oh, _Force._

“Obi-Wan, do you remember Fives?” he starts slowly, realization pouring in.

“Yes, I believe so…” Obi-Wan frowns. “What are you saying?

“Obi-Wan, Fives was right.” He palms his forehead. “Palpatine must have done something to him to make us think he was crazy… but he was right. About everything. The inhibitor chips in the clones—” _the_ slave _chips,_ he thinks, and he wants to vomit all over again— “they contained a series of orders. Ones that the clones would be forced to obey, against their will, if activated. Just like kriffing _droids._ ” He glances at Obi-Wan’s face, and is grimly pleased to note his horror and disgust. “I don’t know what all the orders are, but that day, Sidious activated one.” He closes his eyes. “Order 66. A command to kill the Jedi.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes are wide with shock once more, and he sinks onto the bed, still staring up at his former padawan. 

“I don’t know how many Jedi were killed, but it must have been nearly all of them. The Temple burned.” _I saw to it myself._ “All Palpatine had to do was claim they were traitors to the Republic, and they all just bought it. Then, he had all the Separatist leaders killed—” _had_ me _kill them_ — “ended the war just like that, and declared himself Emperor, and there you go.” He flops onto the bed next to Obi-Wan, suddenly numb. “One evil, brilliant plan to take over the galaxy. Kriffing foolproof.” And all that plan needed to be complete… was his own involvement. Darth Vader. _My fault._

The tears are threatening to come back, now. When he tells the story like this… he can see it for the tragedy it truly is. One with him as the starring, traitorous villain. 

“We need to prepare,” Obi-Wan’s voice declares, grim, and he nearly jumps at its sudden strength. Obi-Wan rises to his feet. “You need to report all this to the Council. Anakin, when does the attack happen?”

He stares up at Obi-Wan’s determined face. He thinks—oh, right.

“Obi-Wan, it’s not happening today,” he says, voice soft and tight with pain.

Obi-Wan looks perplexed. “What?”

He tears his gaze away, blinking back the wetness behind his eyes. “Sidious was waiting. For… for the right moment.”

“And what would that be?” Obi-Wan is probing at him with the Force now, but he still can’t bring himself to let him through. His instincts scream at him to stay quiet, to hide his guilt, his pain… to let Obi-Wan still believe he was good, so he’d still care about him.

He brushes it all aside, swallows, and meets Obi-Wan’s eyes. “For me. He wanted me as his apprentice, this whole time.” He tries, and fails, to stabilize his breathing. “He waited for me to… to Fall and join him.”

Pain fills Obi-Wan’s face. “Anakin…”

“And I did,” he chokes out, voice barely a whisper. “I told you, it was my fault. I went to the Dark Side—I killed them—I—” A sob breaks him off. “And I’m trying so hard to come back, but—but—”

Suddenly, all he wants is for Obi-Wan just to _understand._ He couldn’t care less about Mustafar, about the years-long unspoken rule they’ve had, always stopping just when things get too personal. He wants the comfort of his Master.

On impulse, he lowers his shields, and lets Obi-Wan through.

His Force presence is still pretty messed up, and he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do anything about it, these past few days. He clings to a core of the Light, so that he can stay _himself,_ but all around him swirls the Dark, threatening to creep back up to join the shards of it still embedded deep within him. The Dark reaches for him even now, hungering after his despair, and part of him is still disgusted by it, but the other part of him knows it would be so easy to reach for it once more and let it all back in. 

He lets Obi-Wan see it, all of it, lets him hear his wordless plea. _Please, help me._

For a moment, all he can feel from Obi-Wan is shock, pain, and concern—but before long, Obi-Wan seems to recover, and his comforting, familiar presence fills his end of the bond. It feels like peace, and stability, and strength, and he lets it wash over him, feels his own Light thrum happily in response. He recognizes the feeling for what it is—love, for his Master, his brother, and nurses it until it grows in strength, filling him up as the Dark retreats to the very edges of his consciousness. Tears flowing down his face, he gives Obi-Wan a grateful mental embrace, right back—and then follows it up with a physical one, which catches Obi-Wan quite off guard at first, until he concedes and relaxes into it. For the first time in days, the Light pulses with life again. _Safe, happy,_ it seems to whisper.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Oh, Obi-Wan, I’m so sorry.” How could he have ever hated his Master, tried to kill him?

“I—I forgive you, Anakin,” comes the response.

He feels a jolt of surprise, and hope. “You don’t even know all that I did—”

“I forgive you,” Obi-Wan repeats, more firmly this time. “I may not know everything that happened, but it’s clear now that Sidious’s manipulations were thorough. It is our task now to counter them.” He pulls away to look him in the eye, a shrewd look on his face. “We need to get you to a mind-healer.”

His stomach does a flip. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t— _this._ “What?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze softens. “Anakin, from what I’ve felt just now, it’s clear there are Sith compulsions buried in your mind. It’s imperative we remove them.”

He clenches his mechanical fist, his insides roiling with disgust. Yet another _violation._ “Oh,” he says, voice strangled. He knew Sidious had messed with his head—but this was on another level. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and turns back to Obi-Wan, who’s looking at him in concern once more. “You have already come so far, Anakin,” he soothes. “It’s rather a marvel you’ve already purged so much Dark. There are few records of a Jedi recovering, as you have, from the Dark Side.”

_Are we sure I’m still a Jedi?_ he wants to say, but he just presses his lips together. 

Just then, Obi-Wan’s comm blinks, followed swiftly by his own. “That would be the Council meeting,” Obi-Wan says, seeming almost surprised. He snorts inwardly—he’d never known his Master to forget a meeting like this. 

Obi-Wan slowly turns to him. “I—we aren’t finished with this conversation,” he starts. “But—we—”

“—need to go?” he finishes, unable to keep out some of the caustic tone from his voice. “Don’t worry, it’s not much. Grievous has been located on Utapau, blah blah blah, and they’re going to send you and the 212th to deal with it. Meanwhile, I get the _fantastic_ job of informing the Supreme Chancellor. Our very own Darth Sidious. Who is going to take the opportunity to try to manipulate me. It’s the same every single day.” He turns away from Obi-Wan. Just once, he thought he was more important than the karking Council. Just _once._

A beat. “Anakin—”

“Just go. Not like I’m going anywhere. I’ll just be here, same old issues, when today repeats itself. I’ve got all the time in the world. You won’t remember, of course. Off capturing Grievous, for the tenth time in a row—”

“ _Anakin._ ”

He looks over his shoulder, hesitant.

“I’m informing them we’re busy,” Obi-Wan says, voice placating—and he wants to be annoyed at the tone, but somehow, he isn’t. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this—as much as we can, before the day resets, as you say. The Council can wait.”

He suddenly feels guilty. “Obi-Wan—”

“No, this is important. I believe the Force is telling me to stay.”

_The Force, huh,_ comes the bitter thought, before he can stop it.

“But it’s not just the Force,” Obi-Wan interrupts, meeting his eyes. “It’s because I want to.”

He feels a spark of hope. Obi-Wan indicates such feelings, ones that might be considered close to attachment, so rarely. Overcome, he can do nothing but nod.

The Light thrums once more. _Happy. Together. Safe._


End file.
